Uncategorized
- Anthropology
The Pirahã Challenge
A linguist has sparked controversy with his proposal that a tribe of about 200 people living in Brazil's Amazon rain forest speaks a language devoid of counting and color terms, clauses, and other elements of grammar often considered to be universal.
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The lack of the linguistic device “recursion” in the Pirahã language might be more subtle than investigator Dan Everett suspects. I’ve heard examples of the sentence given as recursion—”When I finish eating, I want to speak to you”—rendered as a run-on sentence by speakers new to English and by lifelong speakers as well: “I finish […]
- Math
Rating Researchers
A physicist has come up with a formula for characterizing a researcher's scientific output.
- Humans
Letters from the December 3, 2005, issue of Science News
Eye on energy “Cosmic Ray Font: Supernova remnants rev up ions” (SN: 10/1/05, p. 213) is unfortunately murky. It’s confusing to state that accelerating charged particles to high speeds “therefore” produces cosmic rays. And what “charged particles”? Is the “energized” gas in fact “ionized”? “Energized” is too general a word. Finally, why are high-speed particles […]
- Humans
From the November 30, 1935, issue
A giant salt container, slimming down overweight children, and taking isotopes for a spin.
- Physics
Shadows of Reality
If you’re curious about different ways of viewing the fourth dimension, this Web site provides some intriguing glimpses of this strange realm. The site was created by New York artist Tony Robbin in advance of the publication of his book, Shadows of Reality, on the fourth dimension in relativity, cubism, and modern thought. The site […]
- Animals
Face Time: Bees can tell apart human portraits
Honeybees will learn to zoom up to particular human faces in a version of a facial-recognition test used for people.
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The evidence at best is fuzzy for bee recognition of faces. Both sugar water and quinine have unique odors that are probably readily recognizable by bees. And what do the feeders look like in the bee spectral range? Jacques M. DulinSequim, Wash. For the test of bees’ face recognition, the researchers used empty, identical feeders […]
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Regarding the findings in this article, would it be possible for an antibiotic to be included with the RU-486 package to prevent a Clostridium sordellii infection? Like millions of other people, I have to take an antibiotic prior to dental procedures to prevent the very rare possibility of an infection in my heart, and it […]
- Health & Medicine
Rare but Fatal Outcome: Four deaths may trace to abortion pill
In the past 5 years, four healthy women taking the abortion pill mifepristone have died of toxic shock syndrome.
- Anthropology
Waves of Grain: New data lift old model of agriculture’s origins
A new analysis of the locations and ages of ancient farming sites reinforces the controversial idea that the groups that started raising crops in the Middle East gradually grew in number and colonized much of Europe.
- Computing
Network Inoculation: Antivirus shield would outrace cyber infections
As a new way to protect a computer network from viruses, an epidemic of antiviral protection could theoretically propagate faster through the network than the virus itself, thanks to a novel topological twist.
